Here We Create With Love & Disgust: The DIY Punk Scene in Romania 2019
Bucharest based musician, freelance illustrator and DIY punk scene enthusiast Volodea Biri shares insights from the hardcore punk community in Romania.
Romania has never been a place that comes to mind when thinking about punk and DIY culture.
Among the countries where punk bands and DIY ethics flourished in the Eastern Bloc alongside the West, such as Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the USSR, Romania was always lagging behind.
The Emergence of Romanian Punk
In the early ’90s, with the fall of Ceaușescu’s dictatorship and the introduction of “capitalist Western views,” punk steadily started to emerge in the western part of the country. Haos (Chaos) in Timișoara and Craiova’s post-punk act Terror Art were among the earliest notable punk bands in Romania.
Critica Radicala was an important political punk band born out of the ashes of Terror Art as they were beginning to fall apart. They continued the Terror Art style, incorporating elements of gypsy folk music into their sound in what they called anarcho-gypsy-transmental-punk!
Other bands worth mentioning that were active in the ’90s punk scene around Timișoara and Craiova include Anti Pro, Null 00, Guranii, and No Man’s Band.
The eastern side of the country also started to embrace punk culture in cities such as Bacău, where Scandal and Manifest adopted Oi! and anarcho-punk culture. They had a close relationship with the Craiova scene and regularly headed west to play shows there.
With the fall of so-called “Communism” and the opening of the borders, punk bands from other countries started to include the western part of Romania in their touring schedules, especially Timișoara, where the first shows took place in regular music clubs and bars. From there, a DIY punk movement was born out of the need for autonomous spaces and rehearsal rooms.
DIY Spaces & Collectives in Romania
Romania has never been big on DIY spaces, though. They are difficult to establish because of high rents and the lack of suitable buildings that can accommodate them.
Timișoara: Atelier DIY and Gluga Neagră
The most important DIY space ever to grace our land was Atelier DIY in Timișoara, formed by local punks under the Gluga Neagră (Black Hood Society) mantle.
It’s worth mentioning that before Atelier DIY and Gluga Neagră existed, there was a punk collective called Mișcarea Underground, operating within the DIY space of the bar INCA. It included members of bands such as Haos, Arc Gotic, Afis Întunecat, Umbre Zidite, and others.
During its short life, Atelier DIY hosted dozens of DIY shows featuring bands from all over the globe. It opened Romania up to more punk and became something of a pilgrimage site for punks from across the country who came to see foreign bands.
It was also a very open place where people welcomed and encouraged any new band to come and play. This helped spawn punk acts such as Pavilionul 32, Livia Sura, and The Bad Days Will End, some of which are still active today.
Atelier DIY and Gluga Neagră were also responsible for the first DIY music festival in Romania, called Underground Timișoara. Initially started by Mișcarea Underground, it ran for around 14 years and gathered local and international punk acts in one place. The festival eventually came to an end, as did Atelier DIY, putting the punk scene there on hiatus.
Cluj-Napoca: LMA Collective and Rizom Infokiosk
Inspired by the Timișoara scene and its bands, new DIY collectives began to pop up around Romania. In Cluj-Napoca, a group known as Leave Me Alone Collective, or LMA Collective, with a focus on radical politics and DIY music.
Their activities included publishing zines, creating visual art, providing vegan catering, and hosting shows at their own DIY space, Rizom. Unfortunately, it closed because the property was going to be demolished as part of the ongoing gentrification of the area. Still, they pressed on and continued putting on gigs in a music venue. Rumours were also floating around about a new DIY space coming soon.
Brașov: Play or Die Booking
In Brașov, Play or Die Booking emerged around two local bands, I Stared Into the Forest and grind punks Coins as Portraits. It served as an outlet for organizing shows for their own bands while also bringing other punk bands to play in town.
Most of their shows were hosted in rehearsal spaces and abandoned factories, though they were sometimes held in random small venues willing to welcome punks into their space.
Bucharest: Underworld, Macaz, and the Alternative Library
Moving south from Brașov, Romania’s capital, Bucharest, has always been an oddball in the punk scene, simply because it embraced the commercial side of punk, especially during the boom of pop punk on MTV in the late ’90s.
There were bands such as ZOB, who were basically the local version of Green Day. In some sense, they served a role in attracting kids to punk music, though not necessarily to its ethics and politics.
Over the years, several booking collectives came and went, but things really started to take shape in Bucharest when Gabi Molotov, a former CBGB sound engineer and member of Molotov Cocktail, returned to Romania and opened his own punk bar.
That bar was Underworld, basically the only dedicated punk space in the city. Over the years, it hosted some of the coolest shows in Bucharest, featuring both local and international bands.
Other spaces in Bucharest that hosted punk shows included the newly formed anarchist cooperative Macaz, which grew out of a space called The Alternative Library. Its main focus was left-wing politics, but it was also a place for music. Initially, it mostly held parties because of problems with the neighbours, though it later started hosting punk and DIY shows as well.
Another space was Club Sims, a working-class bar situated near a student campus. It was embraced by the art scene because of its openness and freedom, and soon welcomed the punk scene too, leading to a number of shows featuring both international and local punk acts.
As for DIY collectives, a group of young people came together with a new collective and festival called Good but Not the Best Collective. They organized the first Good but Not the Best Fest, which was a real success and brought a breath of fresh air into the local scene. The festival hosted bands from abroad while showcasing many local bands in one place, something that was much needed given how scattered the Romanian scene was.
Another collective was 7inc, a conglomerate of smaller DIY-related groups working in booking, design, and even web design. They were all centred around hardcore punk and organizing shows, though they sometimes went further and booked metal or psychedelic bands as well. Their musical spectrum was pretty wide.
They had already been going strong for several years, having started with small local-band shows in the basement bar Question Mark, which has since closed. Later, they began booking foreign punk acts too.
Notable Romanian DIY Bands Around 2018–2019
More recently, the Bucharest punk scene experienced a moderate boom, with more people and bands exploring the genre’s vast diversity of sounds. Most of these bands were concentrated in Bucharest, mainly because of its dense population.
Garage punk was popular around here, and The Nuggers were the first band that came to mind. A five-piece made up of expats from several countries, they somehow found each other in Romania and decided to start a band here. They sounded like the weird child of The Spits and The Gories, as if they came from another era, yet still sounded fresh and fun.
Continuing down the garage route, Las Poftas were a newer band that had recently hit the punk bars, mixing garage punk and riot grrrl while hiding their identities behind weird masks and costumes. They claimed to be from the States, but their accents gave them away. They had a self-titled EP out and had already toured around Europe.
There was also a small crust thing going on in Bucharest, with bands such as Void Forger, who were very active in the scene with their blend of crust punk and sludgy riffs. They paid homage to classic British bands such as Amebix while incorporating the ferocity and nihilistic attitude of Eyehategod.
Ropeburn were another crusty band from Bucharest. They sounded like Neurosis playing punk, though not late ’80s hardcore punk Neurosis. It was more like taking the band’s modern riffs and playing them as if they were Black Flag.
A band that recently caught my ear was Slicer, a newly formed group featuring people from other local acts and playing straightforward, blackened-tinged punk rock. They were pretty amazing to see live and had the right energy. Just like Las Poftas, they also tried to keep their identities secret with flashy makeup and masks.
Emo punk seems to be continuously reviving across Europe. In Romania, it had only recently started to catch on, at least bands-wise.
Bastos from Bucharest were the main emo act around. They had just released their first full-length, Second Favourite Person, a mash of different emo sounds ranging from Rites of Spring to mathier material such as Tera Melos. Bastos also had a split EP with the French band Chaviré.
TBA followed Bastos with a more pop-punk sound, but with a more political message in the lyrics. They were pretty active live and definitely fun to watch every time. In 2016, Leo from TBA wrote a critical piece about the Romanian punk scene that is worth taking a look at.
Dirtigluu were a new band who had only recently played their first show, and they were crazy good. Featuring members of TBA, they played mostly emo punk mixed with “SoundCloud emo rap.” That might sound weird, but somehow it worked perfectly in the context of their show. I was definitely looking forward to hearing more from them.
On the punk-by-numbers end of the spectrum, there were The Dead Ceausescus, a band started by Gabi from Molotov Cocktail. Initially, they were a covers band playing well-known punk songs from the ’70s and ’80s, but with a twist involving local politics. They later started writing their own songs, which sounded great live, so they were a band to look forward to in the coming years.
Another band worth mentioning, even though they had recently split up, was Killer Victim. Born from the ashes of Mediocracy and featuring a constantly rotating lineup, they took cues from bands such as Integrity and carried a strong political message.
Lastly, Take No More were a neat hardcore band and the local scene’s answer to Cro-Mags and Merauder. You basically get the picture of how they sounded, but don’t be fooled: this band kicked ass, both live and on their recorded material. Their output was unfortunately pretty slim, but hopefully they went on to record more.
Moving outside Bucharest, there wasn’t much to talk about, unfortunately, though there were a couple of acts worth mentioning.
One of them was VVVLV, based mainly in Timișoara but also featuring a member from Cluj-Napoca. They formed from members of the crusty bands Livia Sura, who were still active on and off, and Vera Renczi, a political hardcore group from Cluj-Napoca.
VVVLV embraced the anarchist-leftist side of black metal, somewhat similar to Dawn Ray’d, though their sound was closer to old punk and crust.
In Brașov, there were two bands that remained active, though not as much as they had been in the past. They were still worth mentioning.
I Stared Into the Forest were a mathy screamo group who had been more active in the early 2010s and helped open the way for screamo in Romania. Coins as Portraits were a jazzy grind band sharing members with I Stared Into the Forest. They had been very active in the local punk scene since its inception, but, like Forest, had become less active lately. Punk time runs out sometimes.
DIY Hardcore Punk Labels in Romania
Local DIY punk labels had started popping up around the country.
Fading Halo was a DIY label from Brașov, started by members of I Stared Into the Forest and Coins as Portraits. It was created mainly to release their own bands’ material, but also worked with other European and international acts, focusing primarily on screamo and emo punk.
Dvvm Recs. was a DIY label from Timișoara that grew out of the Atelier DIY space. It was run by Adi Crăciun of VVVLV and Livia Sura and focused on crust and punk. Its most notable release was Iskra’s Ruins LP.
Summercide Records was a Bucharest-based punk label formed only a few years earlier, releasing mostly European and local acts on vinyl.
Beach Buddies was a newly formed label from Bucharest that had released tapes by Bastos and Las Poftas, as well as Las Poftas’ split 7-inch with Cold Brats.
So, that’s the Romanian scene: small but growing. Sorry if you hoped for more. Check back in a few years!
There were also some promising new punk acts, such as Fuck You! Dracu and Cold Brats in Bucharest, and disdedimineata in Cluj-Napoca. Only time will tell whether they manage to push the punk scene forward.
Author’s punk illustrations can be found on Instagram at @grvdwllr.
